February 2012

Welcome to our first 2012 newsletter! Most of this month's newsletter is going to be devoted to showing stats and trends for all of the things that happened in 2011, but before we jump into that there are a couple of other things we would like to go over first:

• Bulk Discounts
• Our Annual Photo Contest
• Instaproofs Android App

Bulk Discounts

One of the most frequent requests that we have received over the past few years has been to add in a way to offer bulk discounts for loose prints and print sets. We have added tons of other discount options, but for one reason or another bulk discounts have always kind of fallen through the cracks and have never been developed. Well, that has now changed! Bulk discounts have been added to the site, and you can set them up through the print pricing area within the Setup tab.

There are two types of bulk discounts to choose from: Compound Pricing, and Fixed Pricing. Short tutorial videos explaining how bulk pricing works can be found here: basic setup and compound vs. fixed.

Annual Photo Contest

It's time for our annual photo contest! The full rules and details can be found here, but basically the way it works is like this: Each year we swap out all of the images found on our corporate site with new ones. The images that are used to replace the old ones are the winning images from our annual photo contest, and the new winning images are displayed for approximately 12 months (until the next contest). If you think you may be interested in participating, please submit your images before March 13th.

Instaproofs Android App

In 2010 we developed an iPhone application that allows you to manage and view your events and your orders on your iOS devices. Since that time, Android has gained in popularity and we have now begun developing an Android application that will mimic the functionality of the iPhone app. The development is well under way, and we expect the app to be available to download within the next 30-45 days.

On to the Stats

We had a great year in 2011, and we will break it all down for you here. We'll kick this section off with some ordering trends...

Ordering Trends

Most of the graphs shown in the section above are pretty self-explanatory, but one that may be a little difficult to interpret on first glance is the "Event Lifespan Order Percentages" graph. The Event Lifespan graph is displaying the percentage of orders that were purchased during each month after the event went active. For example, 63% of all orders are placed during the first month that the events are made active. You might notice the little bump at the 9 month mark, and that is due in part to the event expiration emails that get sent out at that time.

Event Types

Event Type Percentages - Although this graph shows quite a few of the most popular event types posted on our storefronts, these actually only represent a small number of the different types of events that we host on a regular basis. Aside from these common event types, we also host images for body painting conventions, food eating contests, national beauty pageants, pet shows, horse shows, school/class photos, glamour shots, antique car shows, baptisms, rodeos, births, NASCAR races, bar/bat mitzvahs, movie premiers, photo booths, parades, charity events, and many more. If someone photographs it, we probably host it!
Print Price Multiplier - Here we are showing how to find the average price of a particular print size, when compared to the price of a 4"x6" from the same event. For example, if you shoot Weddings and generally charge $7.99 for your 4"x6" prints, you might charge somewhere close to $95.88 for a 16x20 print of the same image ($7.99 x 12 = $95.88). However, if you shoot Boudoir and also charge $7.99 for your 4"x6" prints, the charge for a 16x20 may be right around $119.85 instead ($7.99 x 15 = $119.85). Using this graph, you can compare your current pricing methodology to that of thousands of other photographers across the world.If you are interested in knowing the actual average prices for an event type, just shoot us an email.Average Image Count - Here you can see the average number of images uploaded for many of the most popular event types. If you shoot and upload an event that has an exponentially larger number of images than these averages show, you may want to consider going through your images and uploading only the ones that are the best of the bunch. A larger number of images rarely translates to a larger number of sales, and in fact the opposite is generally true when your clients are overwhelmed by the number of images to review.

Misc Info

Number of Days to Ship Orders - In our Service Agreement we ask that all orders be fulfilled within three weeks, and according to our records, almost everyone is doing a terrific job at this! With that being said, it's fairly interesting to see how fast everyone *can* ship their orders when they really want to (see December). In our experience, the quicker you can get your orders shipped out, the more satisfied your customers are going to be.
Event Date Spread - This graph shows the spread of events throughout the calendar year. This was actually a bit of a surprise to us here... we had suspected that the largest portion of events were being shot in the summer instead of the fall. To investigate this further, it might be interesting to break it down to specific event types and see which types of events are popular during specific times of the year. Let us know if you are interested in knowing about this trend for a particular event type.
Social Bookmark Clicks - Social bookmarks are here to stay, and if you haven't already enabled them on your events, you may want to consider doing that. A single social bookmark sent to a site like Facebook can expose your event to hundreds (or even thousands) of additional potential customers. It's a very fast and easy way to gain exposure for your studio, and it costs you nothing.
Number of New Photographers - Last year was another record growth year for Instaproofs! Thank you for all of your referrals, kind words and suggestions!

The leftover stats...
In addition to the graphs and charts that we have displayed above, we also have some other statistics that you might find interesting:

The average USD order size in 2011 was $75.51. This is a $3.27 increase from 2010's average order size.

The average order sizes for non-USD currencies were: $56.30 (CAD), $108.08 (AUD), and £31.20 (GBP).

A total of 2.67 million unique visitors, from 185+ countries/territories, viewed our storefronts throughout 2011.

Each storefront visitor viewed an average of 23 pages per visit (not including the slideshows).

The average amount of time each visitor spent on your storefront (per visit) was 7 minutes and 29 seconds.

Have a Happy and Successful 2012!

We're looking forward to quite a few new things coming into play with our storefronts in 2012, and we are excited to start showing them off to you just as soon as they are ready!

Good luck to everyone in 2012, and as always, please drop us a line and let us know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions.

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Calling all Photographers!

It's time for us to select new images for our corporate website, and we'd like to invite everyone once again submit to their best work for consideration.

For details and instructions on how to submit your images, please click here:
submission details

Lab Partner

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Portable Contracts

If you haven't already checked out our Portable Contracts iPad application, go and do it now! We have recently reduced the price by over 75%, and now is a great time to try it out.